5 Disturbing Old-Timey Ads Obviously Created by Aliens

Thanks to Mad Men, we assume that all old-school advertisers had one hand wrapped around a highball and the other on the pulse of America. But if you look hard enough, the actual advertisements of the era suggest otherwise. Instead of hitting the heights of sophistication, plenty of vintage ads demonstrated a barely passing understanding of what humans look like or how their bodies work. It's almost like there were whole advertising offices infiltrated by aliens pretending to be humans and these ads are what they threw up at the end of the day.

It's only in looking back that we see how hilariously the alien admen failed. For example ...

#5. Human Laughter Doesn't Look Like That

Dumont

Don't you hate it when you hear a great joke while simultaneously eating a golf ball? Isn't it the worst when someone makes an oil painting of your stupid face as you're choke-laughing? Doesn't it make you mad when the person painting your picture is famed Americana illustrator Norman Rockwell, and also when three members of your family are surgically grafted to the back of your head?

I'm going to stop asking these questions, as the head waves of acknowledgment are starting a hurricane and my house is ill-prepared for the wind onslaught.

DumontThis girl knows what I'm talking about.

Today, we're so quick to hit the camera's delete button that our most unflattering pictures are gone before our brains can even register them. Raucous laughter only counts if it's photogenic, because who wants a record of that time their face made 14 chins? This is why it's kind of weird that old-school advertisers thought disquieting images of people laughing would sell their products. Not polite chuckling. Not pretty smiling or, God help me, smizing. These were wide-eyed, open-mouthed guffaws that are unnatural to anyone outside the dentist's office.

AtariListen up, kids! This sexually charged rock song is HILARIOUS!

Like the word "Foghat," nothing in the ad above makes sense. The little girl looks like the TV farted in her face, and the boy has got to be playing some amazing game that couldn't have possibly existed at the time. The dad is either reliving some 'Nam shit or doing something dirty with an invisible lover. Either way, inappropriate.

I can understand the instinct to associate a product with fun and hilarity, even if the execution is an unmitigated mess of contorted faces. What I can't understand, and will never understand, is this:

Canada DryNope!

Imagine Don and Peggy presenting this drawing to the Canada Dry people: What's really going to sell your drink is a cross-eyed, double-chinned redheaded kid having a stroke! And heeeeere he is! (Produces illustration/simultaneously cleans up the vomit in the conference room.)

I've been trying to make this exact face in the mirror for 30 minutes, and all I've learned is that it's physically impossible and that ginger ale can go back to the hell it came from.

#4. Ads Shouldn't Horrify You into Buying Something

Ford

Look, I work on the Internet. I get the instinct to shock and tittylate the masses for attention. Sometimes you get readers with cheesecake (tittylating), and sometimes you get them with scary ads that would have worked better as advertisements for my nightmares. For example, check out this ad with this sexy lady in her red velvet cake of a car.

FordJudging by the scale, this is the world's fanciest semi.

Why, hello, princess. This vision in your grandma's nightgown is looking for a man to wrap his hands around her faux wood wagon wheel and drive her around town, all sexy-like. Maybe if the man is lucky, the two can make some stains on that red-ass velour. Except, no, take a step back and you'll see why a late night rendezvous with Madam Snuggie would never happen.

Ford*RECORD SCREECH*

There in the skylight is the hovering head of a man who has no reason to be there, other than to assert his authority over his lady and you, the consumer. So who was this Thunderbird ad targeting here? Women who wear their pajamas out on the town, or the strange men who float over them? That was a trick question. The answer is lady Klansmen who forgot their hoods.

As ominous as this ad was, at least the Thunderbird people had the good sense to put a beautiful woman in their coffin of a car. You might be scared or confused, but you don't start crying as soon as you see it. Australia's Teenagers Weekly magazine had no interest in offering you such comfort.

Teenagers WeeklyDOUBLE NOPE.

Not since Twilight have teenagers gotten such terrible treatment. Notice the dinky tassels flaccidly hanging off the monsters' heads and how they seem to be sporting Superman logos on both cheeks and foreheads. If you've ever wondered what it would have looked like if Canada had invented luchadores, there you go. Speaking of Canada inventing weird things ...

#3. If You Can't Convey Human Emotions, Pull a Shatner

CBS Television Distribution

If approximating subtle emotions like joy and not-being-horrifying was a challenge for the aliens who took over the advertising industry, imagine how tough it must have been to convey actual pain without overdoing it. Also, let's pretend for a minute that their only model for emotional range was William Shatner, because that makes sense when you see what happened next.

Johnson & JohnsonBen-Heeeey ... what is this?

I'm no medical historian, but has there ever been a time when chest colds left naked men writhing in pain while clawing at their own bodies as if they were trying to get the sickness out via fingernail scratches? Even if the answer to that question is "yes," was this face necessary?

I say "no."

NEVER MIND the tiny angry man wearing a bowler hat and a maybe-diaper on this guy's chest. And let's not even talk about what the tiny man appears to be doing with that rope. (J-wording off.) I don't know. Maybe if I had a baby man acting like that on my boobs I'd make that face, too.

Hey! Do you remember that time Moe from the Three Stooges brushed his hair back to shill liability insurance in the most dramatic way possible? Probably not. Here's a refresher:

That's not really Moe from the Three Stooges. I just thought that if you're going to gaze into the sad eyes of an actor who sold his dignity for the scraps of money he made from this insurance ad, it might as well be someone I'm familiar with. It was a toss-up between Moe and that guy I pushed off some scaffolding that time, since he was making the exact same face. If tortured faces thrashing in agony don't push a product, maybe illustrations of domestic violence will. Have some delicious Kellogg's corn flakes!